Big Sur place names · stop 19 of 43, going north

Wild Cattle Creek

Wild Cattle Creek
aboutmytripdotcom, Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Highway 1 was open along this coast when it was last checked. Caltrans' own Lane Closure System, as verified 2026-10-06. Today’s road status.

Named for the wild cattle that ranged this country. In 1933 a construction camp for the new coast road stood at this creek, with an emergency school for the road workers' children. The road you are driving was built by people camped in these canyons, and I knew some of them.

Told by Mabel Plaskett, whose column Coast Trails ran in the King City Rustler’s monthly supplement from 1959 to 1964, and who was in print as early as 1941 under the pen name Belinda Brown. Her family has been on this coast since 1869. Her writing.

Where it is

35.9585, -121.4810 — Highway 1, Big Sur coast, California.

The whole drive, spoken as you go.
Forty-three places between Carmel and San Simeon, free, and it works with no signal once it is loaded — which most of this coast has none of. Open the Big Sur guide.
← South: Pacific Valley Ranger StationNorth: Mill Creek →

All forty-three places →